


Head Underwater

by Sandrine Shaw (Sandrine)



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Minor Character Death, Underage Drinking, partners in vampire crime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-01
Updated: 2012-12-01
Packaged: 2017-11-20 00:07:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/579117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandrine/pseuds/Sandrine%20Shaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If he were anything like Damon, enjoying putting his finger to the open wound and pressing down, what he would say was, <i>You're only trying to fix my life because it's easier than fixing your own</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Head Underwater

**Author's Note:**

> Written before episode 4x07 My Brother's Keeper aired and thus departs from canon after 4x06.
> 
> Thanks to the lovely glitterburn for the beta!

Matt drowned. 

It's something everyone except for him seems to have forgotten. Not the night on the bridge, but months ago, in the school's swimming pool, by choice rather than by accident.

He remembers water around him, the pressure on his chest increasing and increasing until the need to breathe became everything. Drowning is not an easy death; there's nothing peaceful and painless about it, nothing serene about going under, but he's not afraid of it anymore.

His memories from the car crash are fuzzy and vague. Rebekah standing on the bridge, the car swerving and crashing through the railing and then – nothing. If he had been conscious, down in the water, he would have told Stefan to save Elena instead. And Stefan would have ignored him because for all his talk about choice and free will, it was only Elena's choices that mattered to him.

If it had been Damon on the bridge, Elena would be alive now and Matt would have died in the river.

He's not the type of person to focus on _what if_ s, but if he were, there'd be more of those: what if it had been Rebekah outside the Grill and not Finn, what if he had never drugged Elena and put her in his jeep, what if Elena hadn't stopped Damon from killing him.

Sometimes, he thinks he should have died in the swimming pool.

* * *

"Nice jeep."

Damon's throw-away comment seems innocent enough on the surface, but there's something about his tone and the way he looks at Matt, eyebrow raised, that makes Matt want to defend himself and his right to the shiny new vehicle.

What are the odds that he'll be able to keep the jeep's origins a secret from Damon infinitely? Close to none, he decides, and spills. "It's a gift from Rebekah. Since she destroyed mine and all."

Predictably, Damon has an opinion and he's not holding back with it. "And you accepted it? You remember that she killed Elena, right?"

Matt shrugs. "Giving me a car doesn't absolve her from what she's done. It doesn't make us even. It just means I don't have to take the bus to school." 

It's remarkable how quickly you can trade your morals for practicality. He expects Damon to comment on that, but as it turns out, he chooses to focus on another issue entirely.

"Question is, does Original Blondie know that? If you ask me, she's trying to woo you and buy your affection with expensive gifts because she has some stupid schoolgirl crush on you. God knows what she wants with you. You'd think after all those centuries she'd have a more refined taste."

Damon wrinkles his nose and looks Matt up and down as if his mere existence offends Damon's sensibilities. It probably does. 

Matt sighs. "Good thing I'm not asking you, then. Look, do you want to stand here and chat about Rebekah or are we breaking into Professor Shane's office?"

Suddenly, before he can do as much as blink, the car keys are snatched out of his hand and Damon has jumped into the driver's seat of the jeep, putting them into the ignition. "Hop in," he says, "I'm driving. Wouldn't want you to crash yet another car, would we?"

Matt grinds his teeth and forces himself not to react. At some point, Damon is going to get bored of bringing up the accident. He's just not sure if it's going to happen within his lifetime.

* * *

April asks him for the fifth time about Rebekah's continued absence before Matt mentions it to Damon.

"Don't you think it's weird that she'd just disappear like that?"

He tries to sound casual because he knows Damon would latch on to it and ridicule him for months to come if he sounded at least the tiniest bit worried, but even though he hates Rebekah for her role in Elena's death, he can't help thinking that school is a little more boring without her around. Boring should be good, because boring means no one is dying and none of his friends are getting stabbed with pencils in the classroom, but it turns out that at the end of the day, boring is just that: boring.

Damon doesn't share his concerns. "Not really," he says, shrugging it off.

"It's not that I miss her or anything," Matt lies. "But maybe she's lying low because she needs time to put some sort of scheme into motion."

Damon snorts and reaches across the counter to snatch a bottle of whiskey and give himself a refill. "You're watching too many spy movies. Rebekah isn't some super villain aiming for world domination. She's essentially a one-thousand-year-old teenage girl whose biggest concern is to be the queen bee in high school and have all the mean girls adore her. She isn't hiding out in her secret bat cave planning to take over the town; she's lying in the basement of the boarding house with a dagger through her cold black heart because she pissed off Klaus and Stefan."

"She _what_?" 

His outburst brings a smirk to Damon's lips. "Oops. I don't think I was supposed to tell you."

In the back of his mind, Matt knows that Damon has an agenda, that he doesn't accidentally let things like this slip, that when he says, "I'd advise against swooping in like a knight in shiny armor to save her, though. You wouldn't want to anger our resident hybrid king, would you?" then this is pretty much exactly what he wants Matt to do, and that Matt is playing right into his hands when he tells Damon, "Fuck Klaus," and storms off to the Salvatore residence.

He knows all that. He just doesn't give a fuck right now.

* * *

When he gets to her lifeless body, Matt finds it hard to look at Rebekah like this, her skin ashen and wrinkled and her hair a dirty mess. She doesn't even look dead; she looks like something that's never even been alive in the first place.

He takes the dagger and pulls. It comes out easier than he thought it would. He expects her to wake up straight away, like Sleeping Beauty after the prince kissed her, but this is no fairy tale and he's not the hero (he's not even the sidekick, he's just some random minor character who appears in less than a handful of scenes), just as she's more monster than princess.

He paces the floor, worried that he did it wrong, or that somehow Klaus and Stefan managed to make it permanent. 

It's almost an hour before she gasps and comes to life, jolting awake and looking at him with wide eyes, and he can tell the exact moment when confusion gives way to understanding, when the memories of what happened makes her features harden and her eyes flash in fury.

"Hey," he begins, tentatively because he's half-afraid that her anger is going to make her lash out at him. Rebekah is the sort of person who'd rip out his throat and regret it later. "I, um, brought blood bags. I thought you might be thirsty after..."

There's no good way to finish the sentence, so he just holds out the bags towards her, awkward and uncomfortable.

"I— Thanks." She smiles at him as she reaches out and takes the blood. It's a hesitant smile, cautious almost, like she's expecting him to stab the dagger back into her heart any second, like she's _scared_ of him, no matter how ridiculous that is because she could easily rip his heart out before he'd as much as lift his arm. 

Then again, her own brother stabbed her through the heart with a dagger – it's not hard to see why she won't trust anyone right now, not even Matt, however harmless and vulnerable he feels compared to everyone else he knows because he doesn't have vampire strength or witch powers or even Jeremy's ring. 

"We should get out of here," he tells her. "If Stefan comes back and realizes that I've undaggered you, this isn't going to end well for either of us."

Rebekah purses her lips, the smile slipping from her face. "He's welcome to try. But I'm stronger than him, and he's much easier to kill. More permanently, too."

"Wait a second." Matt holds up his hands. "I get it, you're angry. But I owe Stefan my life. No one is going to kill anyone, okay?"

"Fine," Rebekah says, and Matt could have sworn that she's _pouting_. "Whatever. But I'll have you know that the only reason I'm holding back is as a favor to you."

He rolls his eyes at her because – _seriously_? "Great. Think of it as one little step to make up for trying to kill me."

* * *

"Are you sleeping with her?" Damon asks, unprompted and without any preamble, while they're staking out Professor Shane's apartment.

Matt isn't sure why he's even here in the first place. It's not like Damon couldn't be doing this on his own, but since Matt came to him with his suspicions about Shane, Damon acts like it's a given that Matt would be his partner in crime. He's not even asking anymore; he just turns up at the Grill and drags Matt off. It's funny, because Matt is pretty sure that Damon still doesn't _like_ him, and he barely trusts Damon not to snap his neck at any given moment, but all things considered, he doesn't mind so much. At least someone is telling him things and letting him participate, which is rare enough. He's tired of being the odd one out, the fragile, useless human friend everyone is trying to protect by keeping him in the dark.

Damon's question is classic Damon, intrusive and inappropriate and intended to cause a stir. Matt's not going to give him the satisfaction of letting Damon get a rise out of him. "Not that it's any of your business, but no."

Apparently it was the wrong answer, because it earns him a look of incredulity. "Why the hell not? She likes you, she's hot, and she owes you for playing Prince Charming to her Sleeping Beauty."

"Maybe I don't _want_ to?"

"You're missing out, man. Trust me, I'm speaking from experience. She may be a cold-hearted bitch, but she's a total wildcat in bed."

Matt snorts. "Seriously? Is there anybody in this town you haven't had sex with? Apart from Elena, obviously."

The last bit was meant to rile Damon, but all he gets for his troubles is a self-satisfied smirk. "What makes you so sure I haven't slept with Elena? Seeing as she and my brother dearest are all broken up right now," Damon says. "Also, I believe I didn't have sex with you. You'd remember it. Unless of course, I'd compelled you not to." 

Matt blinks, and he thinks _What the fuck?!_ He's pretty sure that Damon is having him on even if this is exactly the kind of thing Damon would do, probably _has_ done to countless women – and just the idea makes Matt slightly nauseous. He's suddenly painfully aware of how long it's been since he's been on vervain.

His anxiety seems to amuse Damon, who chuckles softly. "Nah, don't worry. I wouldn't go through that much trouble. Your virtue is safe."

"Good to know," Matt comments drily.

"Although I could probably let myself be convinced to give you a taste, if you wanted to," Damon says, wiggling his eyebrows, and this time Matt is _sure_ that Damon is having him on. He's tempted to call his bluff, to say _Why not?_ and see how far Damon is willing to go, except he's fairly certain that if he plays a game of gay chicken with Damon he's going to lose, because Damon would refuse to back down solely to prove his point.

"Thanks, but I think I'll pass."

"You sure? I would totally rock your world." 

Matt snorts. "I believe you. But I like my world unrocked." 

"Suit yourself." Damon turns away, focusing his attention back on the street outside Shane's apartment complex, as if Matt and this entire conversation bore him. But there's an oddly satisfied little smile on his lips. 

It's a sad testament to Matt's life that this conversation isn't the weirdest he had. It barely even makes the top three.

* * *

Rebekah asks him to be her date for the school's Yule ball, and Matt says yes because she looks like she's expecting him to turn her down and he does like her when she's not actively trying to kill any of his friends.

"I don't like it," Elena says with a frown, and Caroline gives him a worried look and says, "Just be careful, okay?" but considering that Elena goes with Damon and that Caroline's date is _Klaus_ , Matt is inclined not to pay much attention to their opinions.

Damon claps him on the shoulder and says, "Good for you, man," which ironically makes Matt more wary than the girls' disapproval.

Against all expectations, nothing goes awry that night. No one crashes the party with a crossbow, no one dies or gets seriously injured, and the most dangerous situation of the night turns out to be two juniors throwing cups of punch over each other's dresses because they made out with the same guy. It's the most normal, wonderfully boring and uneventful party Matt has been to in more than a year.

Rebekah is witty and sweet and radiantly beautiful in his arms, her head on his shoulder and her hand in his as they sway on the dance floor, and Matt wants to freeze this moment because in his heart he knows that none of this is going to last.

He kisses her under the mistletoe someone fixed over the exit.

Behind them, someone claps their hands, and when Matt turns his head, Damon is offering him a grin that's positively filthy and makes Matt bristle more than the worried look Elena is shooting them from the other side of the room.

"Ignore him," Rebekah says. "He's an ass."

"I know. I've gotten really good at ignoring him over the last few months," Matt lies, loud enough that Damon can hear him.

When she asks him to take her home, he does.

* * *

They're lying next to each other in Matt's bed when Rebekah asks, "Do you want to be a vampire?"

The way her fingers brush over the pulse point on his wrist lets him know that it's not a rhetorical question.

He catches her hand in his. "No," he says. It's not a lie. It's not quite the truth either. He likes being human. At least, he likes the idea of being human, if not so much the reality of his life. He likes the possibility to just be done with all this eventually and have a normal life. Grow old, have a family, kids. What he doesn't like is feeling vulnerable and helpless. His friends, _all_ of his friends, even the ones who aren't deadly supernatural creatures, are powerful and dangerous and they live dangerous lives, and sure, he wouldn't mind leveling the playing field a little. 

Matt turns his head towards Rebekah. She looks young and relaxed, unguarded. He'd almost believe that she really was a seventeen-year-old high school senior, a typical all-American small town girl rather than a predator who's been around for longer than any small town on this continent. "Would you want to be human again? If you had the choice?"

A frown passes over her face, lightning fast come and gone again, and then she smiles at him and stretches in a way that makes her body move languidly beneath the sheets. There's something fake about it, and he's instantly wary, but when she answers, her tone is even and normal, almost flippant. "Not really. I mean, I wouldn't have chosen this life for myself, but that was a long time ago. I've outgrown humanity."

* * *

No one bothers to tell Matt about the existence of a cure until Rebekah has destroyed it.

He finds a note on his pillow that night.

_I'm sorry_ , it reads. _I couldn't let my brother have this. It might not mean much now, but I really do like you. Please don't hate me. Always, Rebekah._

And then she's gone, running and hiding from Klaus' fury, and Stefan comes dangerously close to ripping Matt's throat out because he was the one who undaggered Rebekah in the first place, condemning Elena to existence as a vampire for the second time now.

Matt doesn't defend himself and say that Damon as good as told him to do it, even as he realizes that he's been little more than a pawn in Damon's latest scheme. Perhaps Elena knows it anyway, though, because whatever rift her vampirism had caused between her and Stefan, it seems like the failure to turn her back human has mended it.

He watches them play a game of pool at the Grill, leaning into each other and looking every bit as in love as they did two years ago.

"Young love. Isn't it sweet?" Damon's voice is dripping with sarcasm. "And by sweet, I mean nauseating."

Matt doesn't get it. If it was all a gamble to win Elena, it clearly failed, and whatever his personal opinion on Damon's morals, Matt always believed that Elena was the one person Damon genuinely cared for. "I thought you wanted Elena to stay human. Why have me revive Rebekah if you knew she'd prevent them from getting the cure?"

Damon shrugs. He looks nonchalant, almost bored, and perhaps a month ago, Matt would have believed the act. But Damon's facade is not all that hard to see through if you know where to look. "Exactly," he says. "I wanted Elena to _stay human_. Not be turned back into a human when she only just got a handle on being a vampire."

And yeah, okay, Matt can respect that, even if he hates the way Damon used him.

"You should tell her that."

"Why would I do that? Let her continue to think the worst of me. It doesn't matter. At the end of the day, she's going to choose Stefan no matter what." He reaches out and claps a hand on Matt's shoulder, leaning in conspiratorially until he's close enough that Matt can smell the alcohol on his breath and he realizes that he should have cut Damon off hours ago. "Let you in on a secret, buddy: it's always going to be Stefan." 

Damon's hand falls away from his shoulder and he reaches for the bottle again, and Matt doesn't really have the heart – or the courage, for that matter – to take it away.

* * *

Professor Shane's apartment, to which the landlord kindly invited them in after locking eyes with Damon, is full of old books on witchcraft and mythology, journals in ancient languages and maps that look like they'd fall apart if you touched them, and it's hard to tell what of all the stuff is of purely academic interest and what's potentially useful to them. It's like finding a particular grain of sand on the beach. Matt doesn't even know where to start looking, and even though Damon does a decent job pretending to know what he's doing, Matt is fairly sure that his search is every bit as random and clueless as Matt's.

He leafs through a heavy tome written in faded script. "I'm not even sure if those are spells or cooking recipes, man," he tells Damon. He's just about to suggest that they abort the search because clearly the 'we'll know what we're looking for when we find it' plan is bust, when suddenly there's a hand clamped over his mouth and he's dragged backwards into a closet.

Reflexively, he starts struggling, because even though his mind _knows_ that it's just Damon, it's taking his body a moment too long to catch up, and Damon's hold on him tightens as he spins him around until they're face to face. Then Matt hears it, too: the unmistakable sound of a key turning in the lock, and the front door opening. He stops breathing for a moment, and the hand over his mouth eases and pulls back.

Damon puts a finger to his lips, his eyes locked with Matt's, and if Matt wasn't so completely and utterly terrified he'd probably roll his eyes because does Damon really think Matt needs the reminder to stay quiet? As it is, he just nods. 

Damon reaches around him to pull the doors of the closet shut. It makes a creaking sound that's unbelievably loud in Matt's ears, making him wince.

It's too dark for him to see now, but the rest of his senses are working on overdrive. He hears footsteps in the apartment, coming closer and then retreating and coming closer again, but they don't sound rushed or overtly cautious, so maybe Shane hasn't noticed anything and is just going about his business. Matt can hear his own heartbeat thumping in his chest, and if _he_ can hear it, he's sure it must sound thundering to Damon's sensitive ears. He wills himself to stop panicking, but all he manages is to achieve the opposite effect.

The brush of a hand against his neck startles him so much that he barely contains a scream, and then he's pulled forward and Damon's voice is right at his ear. 

"Calm down."

Damon's lips brush against his skin as he speaks, making him shiver involuntarily. It's probably the worst possible moment to remember their conversation in the car and Damon's casual suggestion, but with the adrenaline pumping through his body and fear making him light-headed, Matt can't control where his mind goes, and once he remembers, he can't _stop_ thinking about it. It's mortifying because Damon's body is right there in front of him, warm and firm, and his hand is still curved around Matt's neck. They're pressed so close together that there's no way Damon can miss his reaction.

There's a sound next to his ear, and for a moment Matt thinks that Damon is trying to tell him something before he realizes that he's _chuckling_. Matt wonders if it's possibly to die of embarrassment. If he weren't convinced that Shane is secretly evil and powerful enough to have authority over an ancient guild of vampire hunters, he'd probably step out of the closet and let himself be arrested for breaking and entering rather than endure the humiliation of Damon's body shaking with silent laughter while Matt's boner is digging into his thigh for one second longer.

"I hate you," he mutters, and perhaps his voice is a little louder than he intended because Damon's hand is back over his mouth almost instantly, and it turns out that it's not helping.

At least Damon has stopped laughing.

It feels like hours pass until noises from the front door finally signal that Shane has left the apartment again. Damon lets go of Matt and gives him a none-too-gentle push and a "We're clear." When Matt checks the clock, though, he realizes that they were trapped for little longer than ten minutes altogether.

"Don't," he says, eyeing Damon warily, who holds up his hands in mock surrender.

"I wasn't going to say anything."

"Good," Matt agrees, his voice firm. "Because we're never going to talk about this again."

He still feels the phantom warmth of Damon's hand against the curve of his neck.

* * *

They don't find any clues about what Shane is up to in the apartment, but it turns out that they don't really need any clues because things come to a head barely a week later when Shane starts controlling Jeremy, who goes on a vampire-hunting rampage on campus and almost stakes Caroline and shoots at least five wooden-tipped arrows into Damon and accidentally kills April – sweet human April, who never even learned the truth about vampires in the first place because they all tried to protect her from it and eventually _protected her to death_.

It makes Matt feel sick because he was in on it: he could have told her and given her a chance to stay out, but instead he did the same thing his friends used to do to him – are _still_ doing to him more often than not – and chose to keep her in the dark, and now she's dead.

Bonnie eventually traps Jeremy, and Matt gets to watch Elena tear Shane's heart out, and he doesn't even bat an eyelid because he's become so used to seeing people get killed right in front of him that it's lost most of its shock value by now.

It only catches up with him later, when he's helping Damon and Stefan with the clean-up. He catches sight of his reflection in the car window and realizes that he's splattered in blood. None of it is his. There's probably some of Damon's from when he removed the arrows, and some of Shane's that splashed over him when Elena ripped into the guy's body, but most of it is April's. 

He stops and stares at himself.

"Come on," Damon says from behind him, "don't just stand there. We have bodies to bury."

He sounds like he's talking about a grocery run, and Matt feels himself growing cold. "Does anything ever get to you? You almost died today. Caroline almost died. A girl who had nothing to do with all this shit _did_ die. And you're acting like it's just a normal day of business. You know what? I can't do this anymore. I don't care if we're invaded by zombies tomorrow or whatever crisis of the week happens, I'm going to stay out of it."

Damon snorts and heaves Shane's body into the trunk. "Sure. I believe you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

The trunk falls shut with a bang and Damon turns to Matt, stalking over to him with an intent expression on his face that makes Matt back away. "You could have walked away from all of this months ago. Left this town and everyone behind and lived a normal life somewhere. Actually, you're the _only one_ out of your little misfit group of friends who can. Except you don't."

"Because I won't leave my friends to—" he starts, but Damon cuts him off.

"Oh, come off it. Your friends can take care of themselves well enough without you. Your sister is dead and your mother is living the high life somewhere else. You have no one here who needs you. You keep moaning about being dragged into vampire business, but as soon as there's any sort of danger, you rush right towards it." 

"That's not—"

"Have you thought that maybe it's because as long as you distract yourself by fighting evil vampires and investigating suspicious teachers, you won't have to think about how your precious normal life sucks because you're all alone and your life after high school is going to consist of a spectacular career of bar tending and failure?" 

His fist connects with Damon's jaw so hard that his entire arm throbs in pain, and it's not fair because Damon doesn't even look like it hurt him at all. Matt should know better than to punch a vampire, but he can barely stop himself from doing it again, and only because he knows that Damon could kill him. Would kill him, probably, and maybe Damon would regret it later or maybe he wouldn't, but even if Matt hates his life, he doesn't really want to die.

"Fuck you," he says, hands still balled into fists, and his eyes tear up. He tells himself that he's not going to cry in front of Damon fucking Salvatore. The guy has enough ammunition to use against him as it is; there's no need to give him any more.

But if he stays, he's either going to cry or he'll hit Damon again, and he's not sure which would be worse. He swallows and sets his jaw and wills his vision to clear. 

"Fuck you," he tells Damon again, and his voice is almost steady. Then he turns and goes away.

* * *

Damon slides into his usual seat at the Grill two days later.

"We're closed," Matt says, because it's 11am on a Saturday and he doesn't feel up to another round of _Uncomfortable Truths with Damon Salvatore_. He's not mad at Damon anymore, not really, because that's the thing about Damon: it's _hard_ to stay mad at him and it's downright impossible to hate him even when you know you should, but that doesn't mean that Matt wants his company.

Damon gives him a long-suffering look from across the counter. "Look, I was a dick." 

It's as close to an apology as Damon is ever going to come, Matt suspects, and it's already pretty spectacular considering that Damon didn't even apologize for trying to rip his throat out after using him as bait to get to the council members. The irony that of all the shit Damon's done, _this_ is what he's apologizing for, almost makes Matt laugh.

He shakes his head. "You were right."

"Of course I was right." Damon rolls his eyes at him. "Doesn't mean that I wasn't a dick about it."

Matt shrugs and continues wiping dry one glass after the next and carefully setting them in neat rows in front of him. He can feel Damon's eyes on him but doesn't look up. "Whatever, man. It's okay."

"What do you want, Matt?"

He's tempted to go for a flippant response, but the seriousness in Damon's tone, buried beneath layers of casualness and fake boredom, stops him. What does he want? _A normal life_ is what he wants to answer. The most honest answer he can give, really, but he suspects that if he does, he might wake up tomorrow in another town with his memories missing and a fake life story in his head, and that's nowhere near what he's going for. Whatever kind of life he wants, he needs it to be his own. 

Setting the towel down, he looks at Damon. "I want Vicky not to be dead. I want my mum to give a shit about me. I want Elena and Caroline to be human, and Mr Saltzman to be alive, and I want not to be the guy who accidentally wiped out an entire lineage of vampires. I want maybe one month when no one is trying to murder any of my friends and I don't have to watch people I know get killed in front of me. But since none of that's going to happen, I'd settle for a drink."

Damon snorts. "Good thing you know the bartender."

With a dry chuckle, Matt reaches for the bottle of bourbon and pours two glasses, pushing one across the table to Damon, who gives him a sardonic salute before downing it.

"I was offering my help, you know."

Matt nods. "I know. And I— Look, thanks, man. I appreciate the offer. But I don't want you to fix my life."

If he were anything like Damon, enjoying putting his finger to the open wound and pressing down, what he would say was, _You're only trying to fix my life because it's easier than fixing your own._

The difference between him and Damon is that he only thinks it and doesn't actually say the words. Maybe it makes him the better person. Maybe it just makes him a coward.

* * *

It doesn't really surprise him when Damon turns up at his doorstep on Sunday morning. It's still early and he's barely awake after a shift that ran late. He leans against the door frame and sleepily rubs his eyes.

"Don't tell me. There's a new guy in town who's probably out to kill us all and you need help snooping around." He sighs. "Can I at least get dressed and have a coffee first?"

"Hold your horses, Watson. All's quiet on the Western front. And on all other fronts too, actually. I'm sure someone's going to pop up and bring murder and mayhem upon us soon enough, but for now we're good. Don't jinx it." 

Damon grins and looks him up and down, making Matt suddenly feel all too aware of the fact that he's wearing a pair of boxer shorts and nothing else. He feels himself blushing under Damon's stare and self-consciously crosses his arms in front of his chest. The corners of Damon's mouth hitch up a little more, and Matt is about to give up and ask why he's even here in the first place when Damon asks, "Aren't you going to invite me in?"

His tone is every bit as suggestive as the way he raises his eyebrows when he looks at Matt, and Matt's question dies on his lips. He doesn't even kid himself that he's going to say no. They're a far cry from Damon's glib suggestion in the car and Matt's casual dismissal. Much as he wishes he didn't, Matt gets it now: why Elena finds it so hard to stay away from Damon. Damon is someone who gets under your skin and makes himself at home there, and however hard you try, you can't shake him.

Matt licks his lips, trying to buy himself some time because his brain is dazed from sleepiness and arousal and he can't _think_. "What happened to having – how did you put it? _A more refined taste_?" 

Even as he says the words, he finds himself stepping aside and motioning for Damon to come in.

With a shrug, Damon crosses the doorstep, pushing the door shut behind him and backing Matt into the living room. "I'm bored and you're... not as boring as I thought you would be."

Matt ducks his head and lets out a breathless little chuckle. "Careful, that almost sounds like a compliment."

"Don't get cocky," Damon admonishes.

"You like it when I'm cocky." 

"I don't like you at all," Damon tells him flippantly, crossing the distance between them. His hands settle on either side of Matt's neck, his thumbs tipping up Matt's head, and for a split second, a flare of fear goes through him because it would so damn easy for Damon to snap his neck right now. But then Damon's lips come down on his, warm and insistent, coaxing him to open his mouth, and one of Damon's hands skims down his body, and Matt figures that he's safe for now. 

As safe as he'll ever be around Damon, anyway.

* * *

_I need to get out_ , he thought, down in the pool. _I need to break free or I'm going to die here._

At the same time, he knew that he wouldn't, couldn't, that he had to see this through.

The same principle applies to life in Mystic Falls. If he doesn't get away from this place and these people, this town is going to drag him under and drown him. But _this place_ is his home, and _these people_ are his friends, and leaving was never an option.

So he lets himself sink deeper, lets himself drown, one day at a time. Perhaps the trick is to learn to breathe underwater.

* * *

End.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are appreciated. ♥


End file.
